The movies of 2021.

My favorite movies of 2021:

10. Licorice Pizza - A delightful hangout movie from Paul Thomas Anderson, buoyed by engaging turns from newcomers Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman.

9. Luca - With its engaging characters and unforced storytelling, Pixar movies don't come much more lighthearted than this.

8. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings - A splendid mix of martial arts action, lovely scenery and a Marvel movie.

7. Nightmare Alley - A little long and a little too violent, but even so, one of the most absorbing movies of the year; an effective remake that nearly matches the original noir.

6. In the Heights - Warm, splashy and big-hearted musical, perhaps the crown jewel of a busy year for Lin-Manuel Miranda...and yes, that includes...

5. Encanto - The songs are fine, but this Disney feature's real strengths lie in its eye-catching color palette and a rich assortment of characters.

4. Black Widow - It may have taken a while for the character to get her own movie, but it was worth the wait as spy thriller and dysfunctional family drama collide.

3. Raya and the Last Dragon - A little plot heavy, but this Disney feature is emotionally rich and a feast for the eyes.

2. The Mitchells vs. the Machines - The best animated movie of the year, with a consistently funny script, a strong emotional core and an off-the-wall visual presentation.

1. The Suicide Squad - Freed from the shackles of the PG-13 rating, James Gunn delivers an violent, over-the-top - and fun as hell - spectacle.

Runners-up:

Candyman

Copshop

Eternals

F9

House of Gucci

Nobody

No Time to Die

Spider-Man: No Way Home

Wish Dragon

Wrath of Man

Underrated: Coming 2 America, Don't Breathe 2 and Old

Overrated (maybe not entirely, but certainly to varying degrees): The French Dispatch, Last Night in Soho and The Tragedy of Macbeth

My favorite things in movies - 2021:

Alana Haim goes for a joyride (sort of) in Licorice Pizza

The childbirth sequence in Old

Det. Banks finds a solution to his deathtrap in Spiral: from the Book of Saw

The Die Hard reference in Godzilla vs. Kong; God only knows if it was conscious or not, but in a movie as dull and basic as this, you take the entertainment value where you can get it

The dinner scene in Don't Look Up

The dysfunctional family scenes in Black Widow; despite the expectations of a Marvel movie, the scenes of Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, Rachel Weisz and David Harbour reconnecting left more of a mark on me

The family's flaws and foibles getting exposed in The Mitchells vs. the Machines

The Freedom Fighters meet up with the Squad in The Suicide Squad; proof that you can take the man out of Troma, but you can't take Troma out of the man

The guard avatar sequence in Free Guy

Harish Patel as Karun in Eternals

I'm not sure how to phrase this professionally, so I'm just gonna come out and say it: Christopher Lloyd wrecking fools with a shotgun in Nobody

Josh Lawson as Kano, the only person having anything resembling fun, in the otherwise disappointingly dour Mortal Kombat

Jeffrey Wright in No Time to Die and especially The French Dispatch

The "Land of 1000 Dances" sequence in Last Night in Soho

Michael Jordan gives the TuneSquad a pep talk in Space Jam: a New Legacy

Nia DaCosta's direction of Candyman, especially the staging of the apartment murder

A pair of action movies giving audiences one more reason to fear public transportation: the bus fights in Nobody and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Rocci Williams learns the dangers of bad wiring in Don't Breathe 2

Wesley Snipes and Tracy Morgan in Coming 2 America

"You're pointing that the wrong way." "No, I'm not." - Those Who Wish Me Dead

Random thoughts:
- A lot of people didn't think too much of Space Jam: A New Legacy (and the biggest side effect of the backlash against it may well be people looking back to the 1996 original as if it were a masterpiece of cinema, which anyone with two eyes in their head can certainly see it was fucking not), but my main problem with it was the crowds loaded with characters from previous Warner Bros. movies. A clever touch, but the focus was pulled so badly - in seemingly every shot - and the film cut so fast that you can barely make out who the hell you're supposed to be looking at...and there's no way the likenesses of the performers playing the characters came cheap. The studio may as well have stacked $150 million in a pyramid and set it on fire a la The Dark Knight...and while I'm on the subject, why didn't they call this Cyberspace Jam?

- Apparently, there's a ton of stories where ghosts haunt a protagonist, only for the ghosts to be communicating with said protagonist. Last Night in Soho kinda lost me with this. "Help us." "Save us." "You couldn't have told me this from the fucking jump?! I almost stabbed a bitch in the face! Then who's gonna help you, huh?!"

- Say, here's a fun idea: when making a movie that's a several years later reboot of (or sequel to) a hit movie, don't reveal your complete and utter incompetence at life by having the characters remark on 'leaving classics alone'.

- Two people I otherwise mostly trust had me rolling my eyes in terms of their feelings on two of this year's platonic relationships: Sean and Katy in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Kate and Dr. Mindy in Don't Look Up. In each case, they felt that there should've been a romantic relationship between both pairs of characters. And how would that have helped the narrative of either movie? Not every man and woman needs to be in a romantic relationship. This would've been especially egregious in Don't, especially since Dr. Mindy already cheats on his wife with Brie Evantee. This would've made both leading characters unlikable and Lord knows that this movie was not lacking for unlikable characters.

- Resolution for movie studios in 2022: no more movies that exist solely to set up other movies. If you're laboring so goddamn hard to make the next movie worth seeing, chances are that the movie happening right now is gonna be worthless.

- Lin-Manuel Miranda's had a hell of a year. Four musicals, one of which he directed. I greatly enjoyed In the Heights and Encanto, though I'm still not quite convinced that the latter would've been better without the songs.

- The year in PG-13 f-bombs: No Time to Die, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Red Notice, Old, Free Guy and the best of the year, Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins.

- My, but there were a lot of movies this year where chicks kick butt. Some funny lines aside, The Protege was pretty standard, but Kate's Japan setting and some effective fights made for a pleasant diversion. And there was also Jolt, Gunpowder Milkshake and I suppose I can count Bruised.

- How weird was it that Olivia Colman voiced characters in both of the year's technology-gone-screwy animated movies?

- Okay, so here's how I saw Spider-Man: No Way Home playing out: Peter getting in touch with the Skrulls that pretended to be Fury and Hill in Far from Home and engineering a situation where Spider-Man and Peter are in the same place. Of course, Peter isn't really Spider-Man! Hell, didn't the 90s Spider-Man cartoon do this...or was that a Batman episode? Eh. Might've been both.

- One reaction I actually, no foolin', encountered to The Addams Family 2 is lamenting that 'I'm pretty sure Wednesday killed someone'. See, this is what happens when basic familiarity with the source material and previous incarnations of the characters takes a back seat to having to be right.

- I learned that, in the midst of developing Spectre, the plan was for M to be a villain. For Christ's sake, just because the character is now played by Voldemort doesn't mean he always has to be a flipping bad guy. Had they gone through with this, I guarantee you it would've been a bigger insult to Fleming than anything in No Time to Die.

- And while I'm on the subject of 2021 movies produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, may I just say how gratifying it is to see them with a professional, non-gimmicky logo again. That ridiculous zoom out of the lion's eye hardly seemed befitting of a studio that once boasted of having 'more stars than there are in heaven'.

- Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Entertaining, if a bit too reverent of the 1984 original. Granted, it was done with the permission of his estate and family, but the CGI recreation of Harold Ramis at the end couldn't help but stir in me a genuine concern far weighter than movie run times or the number of superhero movies in a given year: will studios or will they not raise more departed actors from the grave? (I can only hope that that one James Dean project some putz threatened a long time ago is dead and buried.)

- Free Guy was a pretty fun comedy, but, unfortunately, in terms of its star, it was a tasty piece of meat bookended by two moldy-ass slices of bread. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard - which I'm forced to assume culpability for as I bought a ticket to the first movie - would've merely been a complete waste of time, but it's hard to tell which was worse: the total emasculation of Reynolds's Bryce or Salma Hayek's Sonja being given more room to be completely abrasive. By the end, you find yourself wanting to walk off a boat much like Bryce does. I'd held out some hope that Red Notice would be better. It was slightly better...much in the same way that falling out of a two-story window is better than being hit by a bus. On its own, an acceptably mindless action movie...but then you factor in the incessant schtick, none of which was the least bit funny (and I'm torn as to what would be more horrifying: that it was all scripted or that Reynolds improvised it). It almost makes you wish that Danny Huston's Col. Stryker was No Way Homed out of his universe and dropped into this one to make good on his statement of melting Reynolds' character's mouth shut. To be honest, I'm pretty Ryan Reynoldsed-out. Shit, I don't even think that Deadpool 3 is an option, at this point. (This might change in a couple years, but now...hell, no.)

- Especially near the end of the year, there seemed to be a lot of movies that ran south (and, in some cases, north) of two and a half hours. The discourse argues that filmmakers can make movies as long as they want, but with the omicron variant and who knows how many afterwards, is this really a risk worth taking? New rule: unless you have an Oscar to your name, don't even think about making a movie longer than two hours. Even then, no excuse not to be reasonable. Then, when this disease is stamped out or curbed, three and four hour movies for everybody!